5 Ways Streamers Can Use Linktree to Monetize

Growing a stream is exactly like growing a brand. You have to create a good product, find and retain a customer base and develop a way to monetize it. But let’s say you have the product covered – your content is good and everyone who sees your stream likes it – what’s next?

1. Make yourself discoverable

People prefer to watch popular streamers. It’s super hard to seek out and discover great streams, especially if they have only 1 or 2 viewers. Plus, let’s face it – part of what makes a stream great is a thriving chat, packed with hilarious emotes and copypasta for the streamer to engage with.

Making yourself discoverable can be time consuming. A lot of popular streamers, like Ludwig Ahgren edit their streams down into highlights and post them on their YouTube channel. Others make appearances on fellow streamers’ shows, like The Rajj Show. Sometimes you’re lucky enough to have a clip from your stream gain some traction on Reddit, or maybe you’ll gain a Twitter following from your hot takes.

The fact is, your future streaming audience could discover you through any platform, and Linktree is a great way to centralize this growth. Adding Linktree to all your bios drives everyone to the same place, meaning you aren’t sending them on a journey to chase down your content.

At the same time, it also shows your biggest fans where else they can follow you, maximizing the amount of exposure to your content they get. On average, a Linktree gets 1.8 clicks, meaning once they find your bio, they’ll usually check out more than one destination.

We also recently introduced Video Links, so you can show new viewers what they can expect from your content with a single click.

2. Be organized, but flexible

At first, it might be tempting to switch on your camera at any time of day, but soon enough you realise that a random stream here and there isn’t great for reaching a broader demographic.

Tightly scheduled streams are probably not the answer either. Part of the allure of streaming is flexibility – restricting yourself to a particular time window can get in the way of collabs and global audiences.

So what’s the solution? In-platform notifications? Sure, they can work. But high volume, spam filters, do-not-disturb settings and complicated opt-ins can lead to audiences missing the message.

But, with Linktree’s new SMS Link, you can take control of how you communicate to your audience by building an encrypted database of mobile numbers. You can text out announcements, in your tone, according to your schedule, directly to your audience.

You won’t have to rely on the major platforms to bring in your viewers for you, putting you in control of your own destiny.

3. Becoming adaptable

Remember when Ninja left Twitch for Mixer? Sometimes you can’t rely on the platforms to suit your brand. They could make changes that don’t align with you, or ban you for reasons beyond your control. And what if there’s a new platform that has everything you’ve been dreaming of?

Linktree can help you make the switch without losing audience in the process. A bookmarkable centralized landing page, that you control, directs your audience to your streams much better than a single major platform outside of your control.

Features like our SMS and Email signup links help make sure everyone gets the memo, and Leap Links is a great way to temporarily divert all traffic to your new destination.

4. Moving towards monetization

Of course, you need an income, but that’s also fraught with problems. Donation-based income isn’t reliable and each platform’s monetization standards are unusual at best and mysterious at worst (not to mention how prevalent ad blocking software is). Unless you get incredibly lucky, you’ll need to supplement your income until your audience grows.

Linktree is a great place to link third party monetization platforms, like a merch store, Patreon, Cash App, PayPal or Ko Fi account. Or OnlyFans if that’s your vibe. On your way to making the big bucks, Linktree is a great way to hustle a living out of your streams, and potentially even help you go full-time earlier than most.

5. Analytics

Sometimes popularity is lightning-in-a-bottle, but more often perfection is lots of little things done well. When you’re growing, it’s important to constantly tweak and improve your product and its marketing. The most effective way to do it is by looking at the numbers.

For example, let’s say your stream is hot at certain times of day and you aren’t sure why. Our new Geo Analytic might tell you that a big chunk of your traffic is coming from, say, Germany. So next time around you can start your stream when Germans are awake.

We’ve also recently introduced CSV Files to our analytics. You can get straight-up technical and start plotting your daily growth over a span of months, measuring the effect of seasonality, marketing and any number of factors in the popularity of your streams.

Linktree is also the best way to test out CTAs on your links, so you can find out what kind of tone and language effectively drives your viewership.

Hot Takeaway

Using Linktree, you can make yourself easy to find and you’ll be adaptable to change, income generating and trackable. You could be living the dream of working from your bedroom doing what you love in front of an audience of millions much earlier than most. And make enough money to blow the minds of Boomers everywhere.